Victor Davis Hanson: What Happens to MAGA When Trump Is Gone?

When the story of the past decade in American public life is written, it will, for better or worse, center on one man. Since descending the golden escalator on June 16, 2015, Donald Trump has been an omnipresent force in American politics—an object of hatred as much as adoration, fear as much as faith.

Much of that story will turn on what happened in 2024: Trump’s remarkable political comeback, which made him only the second president in American history to win nonconsecutive terms. That is the story acclaimed historian Victor Davis Hanson tells in his new book, The Counterrevolution: The Fall and Rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA Movement, out next week.

Hanson has been one of the best explainers of the Trump revolution since its inception. In the following exclusive excerpt, he takes on the questions now at the heart of the movement the president built: What happens to MAGA when its founder finally relinquishes leadership? Will Trumpism outlast Trump? —The Editors

As the 78-year-old Donald Trump entered his second and last term as president on January 20, 2025, almost immediately his friends and enemies alike began asking what would happen to his signature Make America Great Again movement on January 20, 2029. After all, the returning but lame-duck Trump had just four years left as president. He would be 82 years old when he was scheduled to depart the White House.

Which led to a natural question: Will Trumpism outlast Trump? Will the movement that one man created 13 years ago—a movement that has fundamentally transformed the world in the years since—continue without its founder at the helm?

A post-Trump MAGA future involves several preliminary considerations. The first is the health, longevity, and political viability of Trump himself in retirement. No one can predict Trump’s future vigor and energy with certainty. Yet even his supporters accept that the whirlwind pace of the start of Trump’s second term is unsustainable for any 80-year-old man, especially one who reportedly scarcely sleeps, eats as he pleases, and wades into public crowds almost daily.